


How Does Your Garden Grow?

by Swindlefingers



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Red Lyrium, Rite of Tranquility, Strangulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-13
Updated: 2015-10-13
Packaged: 2018-04-26 03:58:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4989367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Swindlefingers/pseuds/Swindlefingers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An old templar comes to Suledin Keep looking for respite and lyrium only to find that the one templar who knows the depth of his disgusting crimes now has an army standing behind him and red lyrium in his veins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Does Your Garden Grow?

**Author's Note:**

> From a prompt by Tumblr user [@zioncanyon](http://zioncanyon.tumblr.com/post/130810110443/imagine-this-an-au-where-some-shitty-templar-like).
> 
> Sexual abuse of mages is hinted at but not discussed in detail.
> 
> * * *

Approaching Suledin Keep at night wasn’t the wisest choice, but it was his only choice.

What little food he’d managed to bring with him from Kirkwall ran out days ago, along with his lyrium. The food he could beg for or take easy enough, but the lyrium was an entirely different matter. The Chantry’s tight grip on the mineral meant that none could be found outside of it’s hallowed walls. He took to packing his waterskin with snow, and every gulp of snowmelt filled his empty belly with an aching cold, which amplified the gnawing in his bones from want of lyrium.

He knew he wouldn’t survive another night out in the Emprise, but the eerie scarlet glow from within the Keep unnerved him. From where he stood, he could hear the faint ringing of lyrium, but there was a second cloying melody reaching out to him between the familiar chimes, one he came to know well as he passed Knight-Commander Meredith’s statue in the Gallows.

As he stood under the portcullis, focusing on the second melody, a frigid gust of wind sliced through him. His Kirkwall-crafted armor was a poor defense against the cold. It was made by peaceful, deft hands in the Gallows smithy to keep its Templars cool during summers in the Free Marches, not warm in the Emprise.

Hands made even more quiet and yielding once the brand was put—

A second gust of frozen air swept under the ratty blanket he wrapped around his shoulders, and through the cracks in his dented, decrepit armor, startling him out of his abominable memories. He shivered one last time with a huff, steeled himself, and marched into the courtyard on frozen feet.

Shadows cast with a sickly red light danced along the smooth walls of the Keep and along the slurry of mud and snow at his feet. His eyes darted to and fro, looking for a campfire to warm himself at and ask after the location of their commanding officer, but he found only spires and piles of red lyrium casting their ominous light.

He watched dozens of his unknown Templar brethren moving about silently. Clad in their templar armor, the sword of mercy blazoned on their breastplates. Approaching several templars with faces spiderwebbed in inflamed red veins, and inquiring about where he could find their commander, earned him a silent nod to move further down the path.

It snaked and wound around the Keep, through snow drifts and ancient towers until he found himself at a campfire, and a monstrosity clad in lyrium-studded black armor standing just beyond it. Maker his eyes… it was like looking into the Void itself; red-rimmed and furious. His skin was waxy and sallow, even in the firelight. Alrik watched him slip a small vial of red liquid from a pouch on his belt, uncork it, and quickly swallow it down as he approached.

“Well, well, well. Who have we here? Ser Otto Alrik come to Suledin Keep,” the monstrosity tossed away the empty vial and wiped his mouth on the palm of his gauntlet.

“Samson!” Alrik swallowed the tremor in his voice. Samson: a lackadaisical, bleeding-heart, mage-loving templar relieved of his duty for shuffling _love letters_ for a mage of all things, but perhaps Samson’s superiors were proper templars. The man had been a good swordsman, maybe he served as some kind of personal guard to the knight-commander here. Alrik raised his hand in greeting before extending it to his old comrade, “It’s good to see a familiar face. You look... well?”

“Oh aye, I’m doing _very_ well.” Samson smiled, folding his arms across his chest. “To what do we owe the pleasure? A fancy, shining ‘ser’ showing up at our doorstep like this?”

“I’m trying to find out from these… men... who’s in charge,” Alrik looked at his own empty, outstretched hand before letting it drop to his side, “but they won’t tell me a thing. Would you be able to point me towards your commanding officer?”

A sneer twisted Samson’s pallid lips as he unfolded his arms to gesture at himself with upturned hands.

“You? Samson?” He could feel what little color remained in his cheeks drain away. Samson had always been too sympathetic, too friendly with potential maleficar and the Tranquil. The man had been dismissed from the Order almost a decade ago, but maybe he’d seen the error of his ways after what happened to the Chantry in Kirkwall.

“ _General_ Samson,” he corrected.

“General Samson,” Alrik repeated, nodding, clenching his jaw to keep the bile quickly rising in his throat from overflowing. Lyrium. He needed his lyrium, and what little word existed said that the Red Templars had it. He knew walking up to Suledin Keep that this was his only chance. “Of course. Well in that case,” he dropped to his knee and offered up his meager sword. “I humbly offer my blade for your cause.”

Silence hung in the air until Samson’s thick, throaty laughter rang in Alrik’s ears as he knelt in the mud. The cold mud seeped through his threadbare skirts and Alrik clenched his jaw tighter.

“ _You_ want to join our cause, eh?” Samson plucked the templar’s sword from his supplicated hands. “And why would I want you in my ranks? We don’t turn mages tranquil here. What use would you be to me?”

Alrik’s gaze shot up from the muck he supplicated himself in. “That is baseless slander!” he sputtered. “You have no proof!”

Samson stood in front of the kneeling Templar, absentmindedly spinning the small sword in his grip, testing it’s balance and weight. “I picked those tranquil mages out of warehouses, sewers, and the Gallows itself when the Chantry came down. Do you know who’s name most of them had on their lips?” Samson gripped the haft of the offered sword as he let the question linger. When, in a flash, he pressed the point of the sword against Alrik’s throat, “ _Yours_.”

Alrik fell backwards, away from the blade, “You’d believe a Tranquil’s word over mine?” He struggled to stand as his frozen boots caught the hem of his muddy skirts, before falling back into the mud. “I earned several commendations under the knight-commander. You are fully aware that I am an exemplary Templar!”

The General cracked the pitted blade over his knee, tossing the pieces into the muck at Alrik’s feet, his face twisted with a snarl.

“You call yourself a Templar?” Samson bellowed. He motioned to the people clustering around him in their glowing red armor, pressing in to see what the commotion was about, “These are Templars. These are the ones left to rot by the Chantry. You lived fat and happy like a tick on Meredith’s arse. You toed the line and she let you use that brand on whoever you wanted!”

“There were countless malefic-”

Samson’s hand shot out and choked away the rest of the man’s explanation.

“I’ve no interest in however you justified it to yourself,” Samson growled as he wrenched the Templar towards him by his neck. Alrik could hear the metal joints in the general’s gauntlet squeak as he tightened his grasp around Alrik’s throat. “You made playthings of people we all vowed to protect. You wanted to make an entire Circle tranquil so they’d be _quiet_ and _subservient_. You burned away what little humanity the Chantry let them keep so they’d be diligent little workers who’d never tell you ‘no’ when your greedy hands reached under their robes.”

Alrik struggled in vain to loosen the General’s grip around his neck, his fingers scratching along the cold metal of Samson’s vambrace. Fiery shocks ricocheted along his arms as his fingers plucked at the bits of lyrium. Samson’s unnaturally strong grip lifted him off the ground to writhe and struggle in mid-air. Stars danced in the growing darkness of Alrik’s vision.

His lungs screamed for air, he kicked and scratched and tried to shout, but nothing stopped the cold metal crushing his windpipe. He looked down to watch Samson’s grimacing face swallowed up by inky blackness, just before he felt himself fall through the air and drop onto the frozen ground.

Alrik gasped. The frigid Emprise air rushing past his bruised and burning throat, into his lungs. He coughed and rubbed at his neck, frantically trying to ease the tightness so he could take the deep, full breaths his body ached for.

“Mercy, have mercy!” he managed to croak, scrambling away from Samson through the frosty slurry. The Red Templars closed ranks in around him, forming a wall he pressed himself against.

“Mercy? Ha!” A plume of frosted air rushed passed Samson’s lips and glittered in the firelight. “I’ve no plans to kill you where you sit, if you consider that mercy.”

“Thank the Maker,” Alrik coughed. “I knew-I knew you’d see reason, you were always the reasonable sort.” He knew his false platitudes would get him nowhere, but he had to try. He kept his head down, averted his eyes, and tried to find a space between the congregating legs to squeeze through, to escape this hellish place. He could make it to Val Royeaux perhaps. Anywhere, anywhere but here. Here with a man who knew his depth of his crimes and had an army of monsters at his command.

“I said I wouldn’t kill you where you stand, but death _will_ come for you.” Samson nodded to the two templars nearest their groveling guest.

Alrik shouted as he felt hands clench around his arms and lift him to his feet.

“It won’t be by my hand and I’ll have none of my Templars sully themselves with your foul blood,” Samson continued.

“N-n-no, no, no, you don’t have to do this. Maker, please!” Alrik begged as he tried to wrench himself free from the templars holding him.

“Do you like gardens, Ser Alrik?” Samson wiped a spot of dark mud off of Alrik’s soiled breastplate with his finger.

The captive templar paused as if struck by the odd question. He could garden for the man if necessary, out in the cold, perhaps? It was a strange request but yes, he could garden in the snow as a punishment. He nodded furiously, “Y-y-yes, yes. Gardens are lovely. I can-”

"Good,” Samson smeared his muddy finger across Alrik’s face. “Then you’re going to enjoy becoming one. Our gardener hasn’t much of a green thumb,” he shrugged, and let a toothy smile spread across his pallid face. “Not to worry, though, the only things that he’ll grow in you are _red_.”


End file.
